Why did the U.S. government shut down in October 2013?
Disclaimer: I personally support Obamacare. The most direct answer is that the Tea-Party Republicans are to blame. They are the ones who are forcing Boehner to do this government shutdown. The fact of the matter is, the constituents of the Tea-Party Republicans hate Obamacare SO much, that they will vote them out if they DON'T make a move against Obamacare. They will be out of office if they DON'T take a stand against Obamacare. They were voted into office precisely for this reason. They HAVE to do this. But nothing is done in a vacuum. You have to ask yourselves, why does the Tea-Party so strongly control so many districts? Why do they use such vicious tactics?The answer to that question is that Obama is to blame. Obama is ultimately to blame for this government shutdown, because it's exactly the type of politics that Obama played in 2009. There was no Tea-Party in 2009. There were no Tea-Party Republicans. Democrats controlled both the Senate and the House. So what did Obama do? He passed Obamacare without a single Republican vote. He basically wrote the Republicans off. He tried to pass the biggest form of legislation in US Government in 20-30 years via a partisan vote. He didn't care what the Republicans thought. He ignored the minority. He made a lot of Republicans very very angry. So what do they do now? In 2010, a whole bunch of Tea-Party movement people got swept into power precisely to take down Obamacare and to reign in the debt. These people were elected specifically to take down Obama. And that's what they're doing. Obama shoved the law down their throats, so the Republicans are using the same tactics to get back at Obama. The Moderate Republicans might have allied with the Democrats against the Tea-Partiers, but now they won't because Obama burned his bridges with them in 2009. Republicans feel that Obama wanted his name on one of the biggest pieces of legislation in the 20th century for his own legacy. That's why they don't trust Obama. Moderate Republicans trust the Tea-Partiers far more than they trust Obama. So ultimately, both Tea-Party Republicans and Obama are to blame. Obama caused divisive politics by pushing through major legislation in the narrowest vote ever for any major law. Of course they're going to fight back.
Is Trumpcare the replacement to Obamacare?
As of right now (1/5/17), TrumpCare is just a word, I believe coined by President Obama yesterday, to illustrate that if the Republicans dismantle what they themselves branded “ObamaCare,” then they, and by extension Trump, own it.The simple fact is that of all the people who hate ObamaCare, what they seem to hate most is that Obama got it done.That’s not entirely true, but close enough. More true is that they like all of the benefits offered by ObamaCare (pre-existing condition clauses, no more coverage caps, kids on your policy to 26, etc), but they fail to realize there must be negatives or controls put in place to offset those (individual mandate, for one - the big one).The idea that you can’t have one without the other, and the reasons for it, are complex, and few people (especially those outside the industry) care enough to understand them. However, the Republicans, for all their screaming about replacing it with something better, are unlikely to do any better, and because their approach is to tear down what was already done, they WILL sacrifice any support they might get from Democrats in their effort. That’s why the rebranding as “TrumpCare.” But for now, it’s just vaporware, and if Republicans make good on their threat to repeal and delay, it is likely to stay vaporware, and that would be horribly detrimental to the American people and the economy.What Republicans should be doing, if they put country above party, is working to fix some of the many shortcomings of ObamaCare to make it what it could be. Instead, they mire themselves in partisan nonsense that hurts us all.PRE-EMPTIVE RESPONSE: If the Dems had just flat-out done what they wanted back in 2010, we’d have single-payer, nationalized/government coverage. They VERY much tried to get Republican buy-in, but the partisan opposition was staunch. Never forget that the blueprint for ObamaCare came from the very conservative Heritage Foundation’s alternative proposal to “HillaryCare” in the mid-1990s and “RomneyCare” in Massachusetts.